RTX 5090 now costs $5,000 minimum as Blackwell scalping spirals

Nvidia's RTX 5090 is now selling for at least $5,000, according to Tom's Hardware. That's more than double the $1,999 MSRP Nvidia announced at CES. The entire Blackwell lineup (RTX 5090, 5080, 5070 Ti, 5070) is hitting scalper markup territory as supply fails to meet demand nine months after launch.

The 5090's 32GB GDDR7 and multi-frame DLSS 4 made it the performance king on paper. In practice, most buyers can't get one without paying scalper tax or waiting months for AIB partner drops that sell out in seconds. The 5080 is hovering around $1,400–$1,600 (up from $999 MSRP). The 5070 Ti and 5070 are less extreme but still 20–30% over list.

This is worse than the RTX 40-series launch and nearly as bad as the crypto mining spike of 2021. If you were banking on a 5090 to handle 4K max settings this year, you're either paying luxury car money or waiting until 2027 for supply to normalize. The RX 9070 XT looks more appealing by the day, even if it can't quite match raw raster.

Check BetterFPS's GPU tier list to see what actually makes sense at current street prices — spoiler: it's not a $5,000 5090.